Tuesday, February 2, 2016

IN OR OUT? THE FORTHCOMING REFERENDUM ON BRITAIN’S MEMBERSHIP OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

The following is an article by a member of COPOV. It is a
personal one and does not necessarily reflect the views of other COPOV members
or of its Management Committee:

It is looking increasingly likely that within the next
six months the general public will again be asked to make a decision on whether
to remain in the European Union as it is now constituted. So much has changed
in the last forty years when the previous referendum was held. The admission of
those former communist countries in Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall
, economic and monetary union with the euro as a single currency, the vast
migration into Europe from many states in the Near East, the rise of terrorism
and most notably the threat posed by ISIS.
These are enormous changes posing great problems for the leaders of the
free world. Is it possible I ask myself for the United Kingdom to adopt a
policy of seemingly ‘splendid isolation’ in such a situation?

Let us not kid ourselves. Referendums are alien to the
British Constitution and should be used only sparingly. Unfortunately they tend
to be used for party political purposes in an attempt to patch up differences
within those parties. Most of you reading this article will remember that in
1975 the so called renegotiation undertaken by the then Prime Minister Harold
Wilson and his then Foreign Secretary James Callaghan when put to the Cabinet
had seven dissenting ministers who were given a licence to campaign for
withdrawal. Twenty or so years later and after the fall of Margaret Thatcher,
John Major’s government was rent asunder by differences over Europe. These
differences have never been resolved and our party in government again now has
to finally face up to the fact that we are split down the middle with those
wishing to secede probably having a very slight majority. The referendums
concerning devolution in the late nineteen nineties (confined incidentally to
only Scotland and Wales) and the September 2014 referendum in Scotland only
confirm the dangers of using such a device and should have been a warning. In
the nineteen eighties the Labour party holding a large number of seats in
Scotland fanned the flames of discontent by accusing the then Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher of having no mandate in Scotland when the Unionists were in a
minority in Scotland and were relying on English Members of Parliament to get
Scottish business through. And Margaret Thatcher, stubborn as she sometimes was
,only added fuel to the flames by insisting that the ‘community charge’ (poll tax) be
introduced in Scotland first as a trial run for the rest of the country.
Secondly the Labour Party accustomed as it was to large majorities in some very
safe seats could never conceive of the possibility of ever losing its Scottish
fiefdom which it had ruled ever since the mid sixties. The continued advance of
Scottish Nationalism since 1998 and the astonishing and unprecedented 2015
General Election results have shown how false that assumption by the Labour
party has been. A second referendum on Scottish independence is being mooted in
some quarters in the hope of reversing the 2014 decision. And, if by a quirk of
fate, in the forthcoming European referendum Scotland votes to stay in and the
rest of the United Kingdom votes to come out then we will have a constitutional
crisis par excellence. This, of course, may not happen but there is going to be
bitterness whichever side wins and the wounds so inflicted will take a long
time to heal.

UKIP’s appeal has crossed the party divide appealing to
those elements in the Conservative Party who believe in ‘England, my England’ a
nostalgic look back at times long gone and to the old working class Labour voter
in the South Wales valleys and in the mill and steel towns of North and North
East England who feel that the Labour party they once supported no longer
understands them run as it is by a rich and powerful elite based in London
whose roots in the Labour party are as one person said of Tony Blair ‘like a
stick of celery’. But those supporting
UKIP are no visionaries and seem to the writer to be hankering after a better
yesterday.

The forthcoming Presidential Election in the United
States of America is also affecting the way the writer intends to vote. It
seems that the leading USA Presidential contenders in both the Democrat and
Republican Parties are likely to be an extreme Liberal and an extreme
Conservative with Hillary Clinton for the Democrats having the edge. In some
quarters it is rumoured that the United States could conceivably pull its 100,000
troops out of Europe and were this to happen some sort of common European
defence policy would have to be thrashed out. The so called special
relationship between the United Kingdom and the USA has on times been under
severe strain notably when Harold Wilson as Prime Minister refused quite rightly not to agree to Lyndon
Johnson’s request for British troops in Vietnam, Edward Heath, his Common
Market negotiations successfully concluded held Richard Nixon in distain,
Harold Macmillan was left to repair relations with Dwight Eisenhower after the
Suez debacle although judging from the telephone conversations now available
over the internet concerning the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 John Kennedy
whose eldest sister had married in Macmillan’s in laws kept the then Prime
Minister fully informed about the developing situation.

Ronald Reagan’s love in with Margaret Thatcher (or was it
the other way round?) lasted for eight years although relations there were
sometimes strained. I remember at one Bournemouth conference in the early
2000’s Sir Malcolm Rifkind relating the story of how Reagan was taking a phone
call from Margaret Thatcher and after a harangue of about ten minutes he put
his hand over the telephone and turning to one of his aides and whispered ‘Gee!
Isn’t she wonderful?’ Tony Blair’s
closeness to George W. Bush at the time of the Iraq War probably was not good
for either man’s reputation. Even the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his
disagreements with Winston Churchill particularly over how to deal with Soviet
Dictator Josef Stalin. And while accepting Margaret Thatcher’s view that Europe
was the cause of two World Wars in the twentieth century it has to be
remembered that Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in the late nineteen twenties
and the early nineteen thirties only came about because he was able ruthlessly
to exploit the harsh penalties financial and otherwise which had been imposed, largely
at France’s instigation, on the German population via the Versailles Treaty in
1919. The USA itself is changing, the white population is shrinking, and there
are more and more Latinos and other races taking up residence there. The United Kingdom never has been and never
will be the fifty first state of the USA. We are tied not only by geography but
by our history to Europe. That fact cannot be denied. Within ten years people
will be asking ‘What was so special about our relationship with the USA?’

Many of our biggest companies when not owned by other
European companies have important trade links there. You can get on an
aeroplane from Heathrow at 6 a.m. in the morning do business in maybe two
European Capital cities such as Paris and Brussels and be back in London at 8
p.m. the same evening. The writer believes that our future lies in Europe and
that we will not be forgiven by future generations if we were to leave.

The writer would be the first to concede that not
everything is well in the European Union.
Many of our previous Commissioners have been failed politicians from
this country. The lavish salaries and perks showered upon Members of the
European Parliament coupled with virtually no accountability stinks and just
shows how out of touch many of the Members are. Others get well paid jobs there
based not on ability but on whom they know. The European Union’s complete
failure to come up with a solution to the continuing refugee crisis that is
fair and acceptable to all countries has only fanned the flames of discontent
and resentment. Surely playing a prominent role in trying to solve the problem
is better than no role at all. The writer has grave doubts whether we could in
any case successfully implement border controls desirable though they might be.

The reader will by now have probably guessed that the
writer will reluctantly vote ‘yes’ for remaining in. As Harold Macmillan once said:
Better stay with nurse for fear of something worse. Or as USA President Johnson
once said (though his language would have been classed as an ‘expletive deleted’):
I would rather have him inside the tent looking out than outside the tent
looking in!

Hopefully the debate in the coming months will be fair
frank and open with both sides able to freely express their views. The result
is very important and will decide the United Kingdom’s destiny for the next
hundred years or so.

About Me

• In 1995 wrote a Paper for the Bow Group – “The Conservative Party for the 21st Century” proposing a Party Constitution. - introduced in 1998.
Author: “Our Fight for Democracy” – a history of democracy in the United Kingdom.
MEDIA: TV and radio appearances include “Newsnight”, “Today”, “World at One”, “World Tonight”, “News 24” etc.